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Jamaica
Jewel Runaway Bay (formerly Breezes)
This is a review of:

Breezes Runaway Bay Resort All Inclusive

Detailed Ratings
Accommodation Value:
4.0
Communication:
3.0
General Location:
5.0
Wedding Sites:
5.0
Wedding Value:
5.0
loquaciouspunky

By loquaciouspunky, · 1,412 Views · 2 Comments

I am so happy we got married here. The venue was small, but perfect. It felt so intimate and after seeing weddings at other resorts, I am so glad that we did it at Jewel. It was everything we wanted.  Here is my review
 
Club Mo Bay
We did this and we are so glad that we did.  Since we brought down stuff for decorations & for the ceremony, we had a lot of bags.  Club Mo bay allowed us to cut to the front of the lines in customs & a second line in immigration.  They then brought us to their lounge where we had time to have some appetizers & rum punch/red stripe.  They then got a porter to bring us to our bus to the Jewel. 
 
Make sure that you have your itinerary handy.  The bus driver and hotels want to see your itinerary & confirmation information.
 
The bus ride was approximately 45 minutes.  They had red stripe for sale on the bus, which made the ride feel shorter.  Some in our group were on buses that made stops, ours didn't.
 
Resort
Jewel is so so so nice! Everything (lobby & restaurants) is open air which I didn't realize. The resort is small enough where you can find your group easily, but its large enough that if everyone wants to do their own thing they can as well.
 
As soon as we arrived, we had a welcome sign for our wedding party.  The porters grabbed our bags and we were directed to sit down and wait in the lobby.  The front desk got our information and checked us in while a waitress brought us their drink of the day specials. 
 
We got the plunge pool room, which was nice.  We utilized our private pool a few times, but we usually were in the main pools with our wedding group.
 
Scuba was awesome! Its $40 a dive and dove a boat wreck & airplane (We are open water certified).  The dive masters were great too.
 
A few of our guests went out on the glass bottom boat and enjoyed it.  It has great snorkeling too.  There is a reef where there are a ton of fish not far from the shore. 
 
Service was great from the employees of the resort.  They have activities throughout the day that you can participate in if you choose.  My step daughter (8) did the horse grooming and face painting and said she really liked it.  They are currently building a water park (scheduled to open in December) which will really make kids happy.
 
The grounds were well kept.  People were constantly cleaning, painting, and keeping the resort looking good.
 
We had free wi-fi in the lobby. Sometimes my phone wouldn't connect to the wi-fi, but now I believe its free wi-fi throughout the resort.

I wouldn't recommend going outside the resort gates. They take your name & room number if you go off resort just in case.
 
Wedding Stuff 
Kamika is the wedding coordinator and met us as soon as we got to the hotel and started the check in process. shes super nice and has this stuff down pat. She usually takes 5-10 days to get back to you via email.  So just have patience. The first full day that you are there, you will have a meeting with Kamika where she goes over everything. Apparently in Jamaica, there is a 15 minute grace period after you sign your marriage license if you wanna get out of it...plus the minister will talk to the groom before the ceremony (to make sure the grooms aren't being pressured into the marriage). she has a long worksheet to go through regarding music, cake flavors (chocolate, vanilla or jamaican fruit) . Make sure you know what songs you want for your wedding (as guests are seated, bridal party, bridal entrance, sand ceremony, signing of marriage certificate, when you walk out, 1st dance, cake cutting and when you walk into the reception) Burn these to CD to bring with you.

 

Bachelor parties

We went to margaritaville in ocho rios for our party. I wouldn't recommend it. If you have more than 10 they will give you a free ride there, but there were no tourists at the place. .


Food
The food is similar to cruise quality.  The Japanese & pizza restaurants were great though! All restaurants are open air, which I didn't know, but it was still nice. The italian restaurant is being remodeled so its temporarily relocated to the beach grill.  The italian was my least favorite, but the make your own pasta & tiramisu was good. Breakfast was awesome with omelets, made to order eggs, fabulous banana bread and everything else you might want to eat.

Rehearsal
There is no rehearsal, but its not really necessary. Kamika will direct you every step of the way. She set up a "rehearsal dinner" at Jade (the Japanese restaurant) the night before the wedding and it was so nice & so fun! Highly recommend that!

Hair/Make up
Bring color pics of exactly how you want your her hair & make up to look.

pre-ceremony:
My husband and wedding group were told to meet at the lobby bar at 2:45 to be escorted down to the wedding location. Wedding was at 3. They all got to relax and have a pre-wedding drink. kamika then escorted them all to the beach location.  She then came and got me and brought me down to the ceremony location. 
 
There are 2 ceremony sites available, the beach & the beach gazebo.  Both are side by side and really nice.  I am attaching a photo of the two locations.

The Ceremony:
Kamika will clear out the area for you so you don't have any random people in your wedding background. Unfortunately, we had some drunk who kept trying to get in the background regardless, but I didn't even notice him until I heard about it at the reception.
 
We had the precious gem package (which is free with a certain # of night stays and a certain category room).  So we had to pay extra for everyone over 6, but it was reasonable.  This package does not include any decorations except chairs for the ceremony & the altar stand for the beach wedding.  I am attaching a picture of what ours looked like (we brought the raffia decorations).  It also comes with a free bouquet (carnations or daisies).  I brought my own bouquet, so I used the flowers as part of my centerpieces.
 
We brought stuff for our sand ceremony. They have a really cute sign that I saw on their facebook that said "shoes here, vows there, love everywhere" that kamika put up for us.  The ceremony was a little unconventional. They break everything up, so you have your traditional vows, then we said the vows we wrote each other, then the ring exchange. The minister  made us pose for ring pics after, then we did the sand ceremony (with posing for pics) then the marriage license signing (with posing for pics). You will have to choose 2 people to sign your license as witnesses and will need to give their names to kamika at your meeting. The minister was great.  He could tell how nervous  & emotional we both were and did his best to put us at ease. 
 
After the ceremony ended, Kamika walked us and the entire group to the front of the resort for a "surprise". We went on the surprise and our group got escorted to our reception site which is a gazebo across from the infinity pool. ( I am attaching a picture of what it looked like set up for our group of 31) I brought table decor and they set everything up to my specifications. (bring color pics of how you want everything set up). we did fishing nets as our table runners, triangular pictures frames and candles then the red stripe bottles with the flowers from my "free bouquet" in it. It looked so good!!! The reception flew by!!!

We did our first dance & cake cutting in the gazebo. The appetizers were in the gazebo and the open bar was next to it. I brought purple napkins and purple straws just to personalize it a little more. You don't need champagne glasses or cake cutting stuff (unless you want your own) Kamika mc'd it which was nice.

After our reception was done, we went to the beach to take photos with our group. The timing was perfect for beautiful sunset pictures! We got so many good ones.

Dinner
Our dinner was the night of the beach party (Monday night). Kamika set up all of our stuff from the reception to the tables at the beach party. They put us at the front tables for the entertainment. It was like the beach party was for us. It was so much fun and we had a great time.

Photo/video
Sheldon Davis is the one in charge of the photo shop. Him and his partner did a great job taking pics. We had a family member take photos in addition to the resort photographers.  The pictures onsite are pricey... for 12 pics, it was $190. We got a video as well and we are very happy with that. If you buy a video, you get $100 of a wedding pic package. Be aware, they have 2 price lists one for resort pictures and one for wedding pictures.

We also did a trash the dress session the next day in the ocean and those pics are probably some of my favorites. Jumping in the ocean at sunrise with my dress made some beautiful and unique pics. I highly recommend it.


Out of town bags
If you are bringing out of town bags for your guests...I highly recommend getting them tumblers. I bought mine at dollar tree for a dollar a piece and they were a huge hit! Other guests at the resort kept asking us where we got them. The glasses at the resort for the drinks are small, so it helps with not having to take as many trips. Def bring bug spray!!!  They were actively spraying for them while we were there, but we got eaten alive by mosquitos.  A few other things: bottle openers, hand sanitizer, shout wipes and aloe vera came in very handy.

We also did our own private tie-dye party (set up by Kamika). So we put t-shirts in everyones bag. That was fun and they all got a cute souvenir to take home. A lot of them actually wore them on the plane ride home.
 
This resort was perfect for us.  We look forward to one day going back.  Message me if you have any questions!

2 Comments


Thank you so much for the wonderful review very helpful. I'm having a hard time finding reviews and tips for weddings at this location. I was wondering if you used the resort photographer for your trash the dress photo shoot and could you pay to have the photographer from the resort stay longer than the hour that is offered in there packages????

Beautiful photos that you attached!!! Thank you thank you!!!

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